Cite as: 512 U. S. 687 (1994)
Scalia, J., dissenting
Brennan put it in his opinion concurring in judgment: "Religionists no less than members of any other group enjoy the full measure of protection afforded speech, association, and political activity generally." 435 U. S., at 641; see also Widmar v. Vincent, 454 U. S. 263 (1981). I see no reason why it is any less pernicious to deprive a group rather than an individual of its rights simply because of its religious beliefs.
Perhaps appreciating the startling implications for our constitutional jurisprudence of collapsing the distinction between religious institutions and their members, Justice Souter tries to limit his "unconstitutional conferral of civil authority" holding by pointing out several features supposedly unique to the present cases: that the "boundary lines of the school district divide residents according to religious affiliation," ante, at 699 (emphasis added); that the school district was created by "a special Act of the legislature," ante, at 700; and that the formation of the school district ran counter to the legislature's trend of consolidating districts in recent years, ibid. Assuming all these points to be true (and they are not), they would certainly bear upon whether the legislature had an impermissible religious motivation in creating the district (which is Justice Souter's next point, in the discussion of which I shall reply to these arguments). But they have nothing to do with whether conferral of power upon a group of citizens can be the conferral of power upon a religious institution. It cannot. Or if it can, our Establishment Clause jurisprudence has been transformed.
III
I turn, next, to Justice Souter's second justification for finding an establishment of religion: his facile conclusion that the New York Legislature's creation of the Kiryas Joel school district was religiously motivated. But in the Land of the Free, democratically adopted laws are not so easily impeached by unelected judges. To establish the unconstitu-
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